What Is Man? and Other Essays

WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS

By Mark Twain

(Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910)

CONTENTS

WHAT IS MAN? THE DEATH OF JEAN THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY AT THE SHRINE OF ST. WAGNER WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY CONCERNING TOBACCO THE BEE TAMING THE BICYCLE IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?

WHAT IS MAN?

I

a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit

[The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing. The Old Man had asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more. The Young Man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and furnish his reasons for his position.]

Old Man. What are the materials of which a steam-engine is made?

Young Man. Iron, steel, brass, white-metal, and so on.

O.M. Where are these found?

Y.M. In the rocks.

O.M. In a pure state?

Y.M. No—in ores.

O.M. Are the metals suddenly deposited in the ores?

Y.M. No—it is the patient work of countless ages.

O.M. You could make the engine out of the rocks themselves?

Y.M. Yes, a brittle one and not valuable.

O.M. You would not require much, of such an engine as that?

Y.M. No—substantially nothing.

O.M. To make a fine and capable engine, how would you proceed?

Y.M. Drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the iron ore; crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pig-iron; put some of it through the Bessemer process and make steel of it. Mine and treat and combine several metals of which brass is made.

O.M. Then?

Y.M. Out of the perfected result, build the fine engine.

O.M. You would require much of this one?

Y.M. Oh, indeed yes.

O.M. It could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a word all the cunning machines of a great factory?

Y.M. It could.

O.M. What could the stone engine do?

Y.M. Drive a sewing-machine, possibly—nothing more, perhaps.

O.M. Men would admire the other engine and rapturously praise it?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. But not the stone one?

Y.M. No.

O.M. The merits of the metal machine would be far above those of the stone one?

Y.M. Of course.

O.M. Personal merits?

Y.M. _Personal_ merits? How do you mean?

O.M. It would be personally entitled to the credit of its own performance?

Y.M. The engine? Certainly not.

O.M. Why not?

Y.M. Because its performance is not personal. It is the result of the law of construction. It is not a _merit_ that it does the things which it is set to do—it can’t _help_ doing them.

O.M. And it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine that it does so little?

Y.M. Certainly not. It does no more and no less than the law of its make permits and compels it to do. There is nothing _personal_ about it; it cannot choose. In this process of “working up to the matter” is it your idea to work up to the proposition that man and a machine are about the same thing, and that there is no personal merit in the performance of either?

O.M. Yes—but do not be offended; I am meaning no offense. What makes the grand difference between the stone engine and the steel one? Shall we call it training, education? Shall we call the stone engine a savage and the steel one a civilized man? The original rock contained the stuff of which the steel one was built—but along with a lot of sulphur and stone and other obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from the old geologic ages—prejudices, let us call them. Prejudices which nothing within the rock itself had either _power_ to remove or any _desire_ to remove. Will you take note of that phrase?

Y.M. Yes. I have written it down; “Prejudices which nothing within the rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove.” Go on.

O.M. Prejudices must be removed by _outside influences_ or not at all. Put that down.

Y.M. Very well; “Must be removed by outside influences or not at all.” Go on.

O.M. The iron’s prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering rock. To make it more exact, the iron’s absolute _indifference_ as to whether the rock be removed or not. Then comes the _outside influence_ and grinds the rock to powder and sets the ore free. The _iron_ in the ore is still captive. An _outside influence_ smelts it free of the clogging ore. The iron is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to further progress. An _outside influence_ beguiles it into the Bessemer furnace and refines it into steel of the first quality. It is educated, now—its training is complete. And it has reached its limit. By no possible process can it be educated into _gold_. Will you set that down?

Y.M. Yes. “Everything has its limit—iron ore cannot be educated into gold.”

O.M. There are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and leaden men, and steel men, and so on—and each has the limitations of his nature, his heredities, his training, and his environment. You can build engines out of each of these metals, and they will all perform, but you must not require the weak ones to do equal work with the strong ones. In each case, to get the best results, you must free the metal from its obstructing prejudicial ones by education—smelting, refining, and so forth.

Y.M. You have arrived at man, now?

O.M. Yes. Man the machine—man the impersonal engine. Whatsoever a man is, is due to his _make_, and to the _influences_ brought to bear upon it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations. He is moved, directed, _commanded_, by _exterior_ influences—_solely_. He _originates_ nothing, not even a thought.

Y.M. Oh, come! Where did I get my opinion that this which you are talking is all foolishness?

O.M. It is a quite natural opinion—indeed an inevitable opinion—but _you _did not create the materials out of which it is formed. They are odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered unconsciously from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from streams of thought and feeling which have flowed down into your heart and brain out of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors. _Personally_ you did not create even the smallest microscopic fragment of the materials out of which your opinion is made; and personally you cannot claim even the slender merit of _putting the borrowed materials together_. That was done _automatically_—by your mental machinery, in strict accordance with the law of that machinery’s construction. And you not only did not make that machinery yourself, but you have _not even any command over it_.

Y.M. This is too much. You think I could have formed no opinion but that one?

O.M. Spontaneously? No. And _you did not form that one_; your machinery did it for you—automatically and instantly, without reflection or the need of it.

Y.M. Suppose I had reflected? How then?

O.M. Suppose you try?

Y.M. (_After a quarter of an hour_.) I have reflected.

O.M. You mean you have tried to change your opinion—as an experiment?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. With success?

Y.M. No. It remains the same; it is impossible to change it.

O.M. I am sorry, but you see, yourself, that your mind is merely a machine, nothing more. You have no command over it, it has no command over itself—it is worked _solely from the outside_. That is the law of its make; it is the law of all machines.

Y.M. Can’t I _ever_ change one of these automatic opinions?

O.M. No. You can’t yourself, but _exterior influences_ can do it.

Y.M. And exterior ones _only_?

O.M. Yes—exterior ones only.

Y.M. That position is untenable—I may say ludicrously untenable.

O.M. What makes you think so?

Y.M. I don’t merely think it, I know it. Suppose I resolve to enter upon a course of thought, and study, and reading, with the deliberate purpose of changing that opinion; and suppose I succeed. _That _is not the work of an exterior impulse, the whole of it is mine and personal; for I originated the project.

O.M. Not a shred of it. _It grew out of this talk with me_. But for that it would not have occurred to you. No man ever originates anything. All his thoughts, all his impulses, come _from the outside_.

Y.M. It’s an exasperating subject. The _first_ man had original thoughts, anyway; there was nobody to draw from.

O.M. It is a mistake. Adam’s thoughts came to him from the outside. _You_ have a fear of death. You did not invent that—you got it from outside, from talking and teaching. Adam had no fear of death—none in the world.

Y.M. Yes, he had.

O.M. When he was created?

Y.M. No.

O.M. When, then?

Y.M. When he was threatened with it.

O.M. Then it came from _outside_. Adam is quite big enough; let us not try to make a god of him. _None but gods have ever had a thought which did not come from the outside_. Adam probably had a good head, but it was of no sort of use to him until it was filled up _from the outside_. He was not able to invent the triflingest little thing with it. He had not a shadow of a notion of the difference between good and evil—he had to get the idea _from the outside_. Neither he nor Eve was able to originate the idea that it was immodest to go naked; the knowledge came in with the apple _from the outside_. A man’s brain is so constructed that _it can originate nothing whatsoever_. It can only use material obtained _outside_. It is merely a machine; and it works automatically, not by will-power. _It has no command over itself, its owner has no command over it_.

Y.M. Well, never mind Adam: but certainly Shakespeare’s creations—

O.M. No, you mean Shakespeare’s _imitations_. Shakespeare created nothing. He correctly observed, and he marvelously painted. He exactly portrayed people whom _God_ had created; but he created none himself. Let us spare him the slander of charging him with trying. Shakespeare could not create. _He was a machine, and machines do not create_.

Y.M. Where _was_ his excellence, then?

O.M. In this. He was not a sewing-machine, like you and me; he was a Gobelin loom. The threads and the colors came into him _from the outside_; outside influences, suggestions, _experiences_ (reading, seeing plays, playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the patterns in his mind and started up his complex and admirable machinery, and _it automatically_ turned out that pictured and gorgeous fabric which still compels the astonishment of the world. If Shakespeare had been born and bred on a barren and unvisited rock in the ocean his mighty intellect would have had no _outside material_ to work with, and could have invented none; and _no outside influences_, teachings, moldings, persuasions, inspirations, of a valuable sort, and could have invented none; and so Shakespeare would have produced nothing. In Turkey he would have produced something—something up to the highest limit of Turkish influences, associations, and training. In France he would have produced something better—something up to the highest limit of the French influences and training. In England he rose to the highest limit attainable through the _outside helps afforded by that land’s ideals, influences, and training_. You and I are but sewing-machines. We must turn out what we can; we must do our endeavor and care nothing at all when the unthinking reproach us for not turning out Gobelins.

Y.M. And so we are mere machines! And machines may not boast, nor feel proud of their performance, nor claim personal merit for it, nor applause and praise. It is an infamous doctrine.

O.M. It isn’t a doctrine, it is merely a fact.

Y.M. I suppose, then, there is no more merit in being brave than in being a coward?

O.M. _Personal_ merit? No. A brave man does not _create_ his bravery. He is entitled to no personal credit for possessing it. It is born to him. A baby born with a billion dollars—where is the personal merit in that? A baby born with nothing—where is the personal demerit in that? The one is fawned upon, admired, worshiped, by sycophants, the other is neglected and despised—where is the sense in it?

Y.M. Sometimes a timid man sets himself the task of conquering his cowardice and becoming brave—and succeeds. What do you say to that?

O.M. That it shows the value of _training in right directions over training in wrong ones_. Inestimably valuable is training, influence, education, in right directions—_training one’s self-approbation to elevate its ideals_.

Y.M. But as to merit—the personal merit of the victorious coward’s project and achievement?

O.M. There isn’t any. In the world’s view he is a worthier man than he was before, but _he_ didn’t achieve the change—the merit of it is not his.

Y.M. Whose, then?

O.M. His _make_, and the influences which wrought upon it from the outside.

Y.M. His make?

O.M. To start with, he was _not_ utterly and completely a coward, or the influences would have had nothing to work upon. He was not afraid of a cow, though perhaps of a bull: not afraid of a woman, but afraid of a man. There was something to build upon. There was a _seed_. No seed, no plant. Did he make that seed himself, or was it born in him? It was no merit of _his_ that the seed was there.

Y.M. Well, anyway, the idea of _cultivating_ it, the resolution to cultivate it, was meritorious, and he originated that.

O.M. He did nothing of the kind. It came whence _all_ impulses, good or bad, come—from _outside_. If that timid man had lived all his life in a community of human rabbits, had never read of brave deeds, had never heard speak of them, had never heard any one praise them nor express envy of the heroes that had done them, he would have had no more idea of bravery than Adam had of modesty, and it could never by any possibility have occurred to him to _resolve_ to become brave. He _could not originate the idea_—it had to come to him from the _outside_. And so, when he heard bravery extolled and cowardice derided, it woke him up. He was ashamed. Perhaps his sweetheart turned up her nose and said, “I am told that you are a coward!” It was not _he_ that turned over the new leaf—she did it for him. _He_ must not strut around in the merit of it —it is not his.

Y.M. But, anyway, he reared the plant after she watered the seed.

O.M. No. _Outside influences_ reared it. At the command—and trembling—he marched out into the field—with other soldiers and in the daytime, not alone and in the dark. He had the _influence of example_, he drew courage from his comrades’ courage; he was afraid, and wanted to run, but he did not dare; he was _afraid_ to run, with all those soldiers looking on. He was progressing, you see—the moral fear of shame had risen superior to the physical fear of harm. By the end of the campaign experience will have taught him that not _all_ who go into battle get hurt—an outside influence which will be helpful to him; and he will also have learned how sweet it is to be praised for courage and be huzza’d at with tear-choked voices as the war-worn regiment marches past the worshiping multitude with flags flying and the drums beating. After that he will be as securely brave as any veteran in the army—and there will not be a shade nor suggestion of _personal merit_ in it anywhere; it will all have come from the _outside_. The Victoria Cross breeds more heroes than—

Y.M. Hang it, where is the sense in his becoming brave if he is to get no credit for it?

O.M. Your question will answer itself presently. It involves an important detail of man’s make which we have not yet touched upon.

Y.M. What detail is that?

O.M. The impulse which moves a person to do things—the only impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing.

Y.M. The _only_ one! Is there but one?

O.M. That is all. There is only one.

Y.M. Well, certainly that is a strange enough doctrine. What is the sole impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing?

O.M. The impulse to _content his own spirit_—the _necessity_ of contenting his own spirit and _winning its approval_.

Y.M. Oh, come, that won’t do!

O.M. Why won’t it?

Y.M. Because it puts him in the attitude of always looking out for his own comfort and advantage; whereas an unselfish man often does a thing solely for another person’s good when it is a positive disadvantage to himself.

O.M. It is a mistake. The act must do _him_ good, _first_; otherwise he will not do it. He may _think_ he is doing it solely for the other person’s sake, but it is not so; he is contenting his own spirit first—the other’s person’s benefit has to always take _second_ place.

Y.M. What a fantastic idea! What becomes of self—sacrifice? Please answer me that.

O.M. What is self-sacrifice?

Y.M. The doing good to another person where no shadow nor suggestion of benefit to one’s self can result from it.

II

Man’s Sole Impulse—the Securing of His Own Approval

Old Man. There have been instances of it—you think?

Young Man. _Instances_? Millions of them!

O.M. You have not jumped to conclusions? You have examined them—critically?

Y.M. They don’t need it: the acts themselves reveal the golden impulse back of them.

O.M. For instance?

Y.M. Well, then, for instance. Take the case in the book here. The man lives three miles up-town. It is bitter cold, snowing hard, midnight. He is about to enter the horse-car when a gray and ragged old woman, a touching picture of misery, puts out her lean hand and begs for rescue from hunger and death. The man finds that he has a quarter in his pocket, but he does not hesitate: he gives it her and trudges home through the storm. There—it is noble, it is beautiful; its grace is marred by no fleck or blemish or suggestion of self-interest.

O.M. What makes you think that?

Y.M. Pray what else could I think? Do you imagine that there is some other way of looking at it?

O.M. Can you put yourself in the man’s place and tell me what he felt and what he thought?

Y.M. Easily. The sight of that suffering old face pierced his generous heart with a sharp pain. He could not bear it. He could endure the three-mile walk in the storm, but he could not endure the tortures his conscience would suffer if he turned his back and left that poor old creature to perish. He would not have been able to sleep, for thinking of it.

O.M. What was his state of mind on his way home?

Y.M. It was a state of joy which only the self-sacrificer knows. His heart sang, he was unconscious of the storm.

O.M. He felt well?

Y.M. One cannot doubt it.

O.M. Very well. Now let us add up the details and see how much he got for his twenty-five cents. Let us try to find out the _real_ why of his making the investment. In the first place _he_ couldn’t bear the pain which the old suffering face gave him. So he was thinking of _his_ pain—this good man. He must buy a salve for it. If he did not succor the old woman _his_ conscience would torture him all the way home. Thinking of _his_ pain again. He must buy relief for that. If he didn’t relieve the old woman _he_ would not get any sleep. He must buy some sleep—still thinking of _himself_, you see. Thus, to sum up, he bought himself free of a sharp pain in his heart, he bought himself free of the tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night’s sleep—all for twenty-five cents! It should make Wall Street ashamed of itself. On his way home his heart was joyful, and it sang—profit on top of profit! The impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman was—_first_—to _content his own spirit_; secondly to relieve _her_ sufferings. Is it your opinion that men’s acts proceed from one central and unchanging and inalterable impulse, or from a variety of impulses?

Y.M. From a variety, of course—some high and fine and noble, others not. What is your opinion?

O.M. Then there is but _one_ law, one source.

Y.M. That both the noblest impulses and the basest proceed from that one source?

O.M. Yes.